My schoolwork (i.e. the multitude of readings assigned for weekly topics) is making me look at a lot of things differently - especially things I've never before given a second thought.
"Feature Writing" - okay, so I'm somewhat behind on readings here, but what I have read has, for instance, granted me insight into the minds and journeys of Pulitzer Prize winners - not to mention set out (in a very systematic way) the basic building blocks of journalism. For example, my new journalist idol (besides Neil Strauss, of course) is Elizabeth Cochrane (a.k.a. Nellie Bly), who is just this incredible woman. Not only did she go undercover as a mental health patient to expose the true goings-on inside a mental institute - she also travelled the world in 72 days, proving the science fiction story "Around The World in 80 Days" wrong!
I won't say much about Introduction to Communication Studies because we've only learnt about cultural literacy, concepts of "audience", telecommunications, "space" and "place, and print media and the "digital revolution" ... and it's all pretty much theoretical. The kind of stuff I need to read twice to understand. :( And I have about five readings to catch up on for this subject, so ... better make this post a short one! Haha!
Contemporary Worlds 2 - love it to bits. Okay, so I'm not a big "current affairs" fan, but this is, like, my only chance in my entire academic career to have the luxury of learning about globalisation for one whole semester. The thing I love most about taking this subject is that at the end of the unit, I'm going to know a lot more about globalisation (i.e. I get to talk and write about it more intelligently than I would if I didn't take the subject). :D I'm also looking forward to next semester's International Studies subject, it's called "Contemporary Worlds 1" and it's about world history. Oooh. Hahaha.
Contemporary Television Studies - now, above and beyond all the others, this is the one that's changing the way I look at things! Goodness knows, I'm a huge fan of the idiot box (and the colourful moving pictures that appear on the screen ;P), and I've just never thought "critically" about the shows I watch on telly! But with this unit, wow, suddenly I'm starting to question things, starting to think about the big picture and where it all fits in, in the great big scheme of things - where the television industry is going with all this, what does it mean.... not to mention issues of gender, sexuality (and boy, is there a LOT about sexuality in our topics and tutorials!), ethnicity (apparently we're not allowed to say "race" in Film & TV Studies classes), class ...
[Pic: Me and Ili in Tuesday (12th August) Contemporary Worlds 2 lecture. Before the lecture started, of course. :P]
But I think it's unavoidable to be influenced by subjects like these ... I mean, I just spent the weekend writing a 1,200-word paper on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for crying out loud. I don't even like the show! Hahaha. The assignment was, however, to write a critical review about 2 journal articles academic scholars have written about Buffy, so it was actually quite an interesting paper to do. :) I picked 2 articles from http://www.slayageonline.com/ (an entire online journal dedicated to Buffy Studies! Oh, my! Hehe) - the first was in our set reading, about how people look down on television studies and how they shouldn't. The second one, I got to pick myself, so I picked one about gender identities in Buffy. :D It was rrreally insightful. :) There were, like, three pages just dedicated to analysing a sex scene between Xander and Faith.
While we're on the subject of gender and sexuality ... is Lindsay Lohan really gay??
[Pic: Lindsay Lohan & Samantha Ronson]
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment